Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

‘Such a fool! But I was only nineteen …’

Marguerite-Louise was even younger — fifteen and a half — and what he didn’t know was that she was already in love with someone else — her cousin, Charles. When Charles heard that she was to be married, he travelled to Marseilles, but he didn’t have the power to challenge, let alone overturn, the king’s decision. They must have cursed their fate. They must have kissed. They must have wept. And then she sailed out of his life, on a boat carpeted in velvet, a boat that had its own private garden of violets. How those sweet-smelling flowers must have turned her stomach! And the Tyrrhenian sea, which stayed calm until the last day of the voyage, as if to speed her passage to the dreaded Livorno, must also, paradoxically, have sickened her.

‘And I was waiting in my dancing shoes,’ the Grand Duke said, ‘knowing nothing of all this. Later, she told me, of course — in no uncertain terms.’

I murmured something about cruelty.

‘Zummo, you have no idea,’ he said. ‘She took one look at me and turned away. I don’t know what she said to the people with her — my French was never very good, not a patch on my English — but I saw her whole face shrivel, as if she had just swallowed a mouthful of vinegar. I was so apprehensive, so hurt, that I couldn’t kiss her. I didn’t even take her hand. Everyone was disappointed, though they tried their best not to show it. Imagine: two noble families, a prince and a princess, a fairy-tale wedding — all a sham …

‘We rode to Florence in the same carriage. She sat on one side, staring out of her window. I sat on the other, staring out of mine. Only once did she pay any attention to me. Looking me up and down, she asked me where on earth I’d got my clothes. I muttered the name of a haberdashery in Paris. I thought so, she said, and turned her back on me again. The strange thing was, I’d already fallen in love with her by then, and that made what was happening all the more excruciating.’

Servants filed past me with jugs of hot water and tipped them into the bath. The steam thickened.

‘The festivities began a few days later,’ the Grand Duke went on. ‘There had been nothing like it in Florence for at least a century. On our wedding day she travelled to Santa Croce in a coach drawn by eight white mules. White mules! Heaven knows where we found them. Her embroidered silver gown was overlaid with diamonds and strings of pearls, and a gold cloth was suspended above her head to shield her from the sun. In the church twelve choirs sang for us, but she couldn’t even raise a smile. I don’t think she smiled once all day. Then it got worse.’

‘Worse?’

He nodded gloomily. ‘I was so undermined by her hostile attitude but at the same time so in awe of her that I often couldn’t bring myself to sleep with her. Beauty can be terrifying, don’t you think?’

‘Sometimes it leaves you powerless.’

‘Exactly. And even if I did manage to sleep with her, I would return to my bed as soon as it was over. I was so upset by the whole thing. Sick with nerves. Redi advised me to limit the number of my visits to her bedchamber, but there was such pressure on me to produce an heir.’ He let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘I spent so little time with her that people began to suspect I was homosexual. Me!’ The steam thinned, and I noted the look of horror on his face, his eyes bulging, his mouth agape. ‘Me,’ he said again, ‘when it is I who have decreed that sodomites should be decapitated.’

Ah, I said to myself, but that was later.

‘The more reticent I was,’ he went on, ‘the more antagonistic she became. She would insult me, right in front of her servants. They thought it was amusing. They were all French, of course. They used to help her move from one bedchamber to another, so I wouldn’t be able to find her. Sometimes I would walk the corridors for hours — in my nightshirt! It’s a wonder I didn’t catch my death.’ He sighed, then reached for a glass and drank. ‘You know what her servants did? They set traps so she would know when I was coming. Bells on door handles, chamber pots in the middle of corridors. That sort of thing. For a while she had a dog. Some fancy French breed. Infuriating creature. It would start yapping whenever it heard my footsteps or my voice. Once, her servants rigged up a trip-wire outside her bedchamber and I fell and almost broke my collarbone …’

‘Forgive me, Your Highness,’ I said, ‘but it’s a miracle she got pregnant at all.’

‘There were nights when she relented. I never understood what prompted her sudden changes of heart, and I could never ask. If I raised the subject, she would tell me not to be so vulgar, so distasteful — what was I, a peasant? — and that would lead to an impassioned diatribe about Florence, what a backwater it was, and how her life had become a purgatory, if not a hell, and she would finish off with a sarcastic, disparaging reference to Dante, just to show how well-educated and civilized she was.’

‘And you still loved her …’

He lay back in his bath and stared at the ceiling for so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer. ‘You should have seen her, Zummo,’ he said at last. ‘She was exquisite, even when she was angry. Especially when she was angry. Dark eyes, auburn hair. Wonderfully delicate features. And she could be so charming, if it suited her. But always, in the end, this look of mingled boredom and disgust would appear on her face, and then the fighting would begin again, and she would start to scream at me: our marriage was a travesty, she was no better than a concubine, and all our children were bastards. Her screaming could be heard throughout the palace, and I would have to send her to Lappeggi or Poggio a Caiano, along with her entire, enormous retinue of servants.’ He peered at me across his chest. ‘I became the symbol of everything she hated.’

I asked him how he dealt with that.

‘I prayed,’ he said. ‘She hated that too. She mocked my piety. She would drop to her knees and put her hands together and lift her eyes heavenward and start talking a lot of mumbo-jumbo — or perhaps it was French that she was talking …’

He laughed quietly, and I laughed with him, but then a silence fell between us. Some minutes passed. Eventually, I heard a snort, and then a rumble. He had fallen asleep, his half-open mouth perilously close to the surface of the water. I went and alerted Schwarz.

Later, outside the Grand Duke’s apartment, I stood by a window that gave on to the courtyard at the back of the palace. The eastern sky was the colour of charcoal, daybreak still at least an hour away. I decided to call in at the stables. If I caught my work at odd moments — off guard, as it were — I could sometimes come up with unexpected solutions.

I set out across the gardens. Trees stirred drowsily; the air smelled of wet wood and something sweet but sharp, like wild strawberries. As I rounded a high, shaved hedge, I came across a man on a bench, his clothing dishevelled, his head flung back. Gian Gastone. Tears trickled sideways into his hair. I turned away, thinking to retrace my steps. Just then, his head lifted.

‘Spying on me again,’ he said.

He wiped his eyes, then foraged in the dark air beneath the bench and brought out a flagon of red wine. He raised it to his lips and drank.

‘You’re wasting your time. I don’t have any secrets.’ He set the wine back on the grass, then drew his sleeve smoothly across his dripping nose, reminding me of someone playing a violin. ‘You people. You never give up, do you?’

He yawned, then closed his eyes.

Before I moved away, I heard him murmur something about marriage, and a hideous German woman, and what a joke the whole thing was.